


Those mechanical men

by Keenir



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Cyborgs, Epilogue, Gen, like Anakin on Mustafar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-20
Updated: 2016-01-20
Packaged: 2018-05-15 03:53:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5770249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Keenir/pseuds/Keenir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One of them has been robbed twice by life.  One is the embodiment of what he fought for so long.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Those mechanical men

By the time Finn is healed enough to wake up, there are clicking and gear-y shounds when he shifts and stretches and bends. _More importantly, where's Rey?_

"She's not here any more, Finn," Poe tells him one day before leaving on another mission. "Rey's gone somewhere better, more peaceful."

"She's dead?" Finn asks.

"No. She found Skywalker. She's with him now." "I see," Finn says, and he does. Rey's shown him a taste of what his unit went through when they lost two of their members: one to death, and one to cowardly fleeing. _We were friends - we were supposed to always be there for each other._

"Well," Poe says after a bit of a silence. "See you when I get back."

And he doesn't come back.

Finn is two weeks into his therapy when he hears that Pilot Poe Dameron has been shot down in a Kashyyyyk swamp, and that the wreckage was eaten before a recovery could be performed. His last new friend is gone...again.

By this point, BB-8 is thick as thieves with the other droids, back to doing errands for Rebel Command; so Finn doesn't even have the uneasy coexistence that he'd begun to assume was a form of friendship with the droid.

He waits another month and fills it with therapy and getting used to the mechanical spine he now has, along with the servo-shoulder made necessary by what Kylo Ren did to him.  Tries not to listen too hard to the rumors of sightings of Rey and Poe - some sightings involving a death or two, others deathless.  And he tries to extend the hand of friendship a few times, but as he sees it, _Nobody wants to be buddies with the guy whose friends all leave him.  Or with the guy who worked for the enemy._

Both as a Stormtrooper and in this post-uniformed life, Finn is only human: there is only so much friendlessness he can take.

He leaves two notes, both of them saying the same thing: _I'm sorry, Rey_ and _I'm sorry, Poe._ On both notes, _Thank you for being my friend,_ and signed it with his name and number.

Finn steals an X-Wing and heads towards the Outer Rim.  Away from the Republic and the Rebellion.  Towards what FN-2187 knew _won't be an easy acceptance, even with what I've come to know of the Rebellion.  But we're raised on parables, from the moment we are assigned our unit as children, and surely my return to the embrace of family could be a new parable to tell the kids and spread through the ranks.  Probably won't be trusted with pipes for the rest of my life, much less with a blaster._   But he didn't turn around.

* * *

Han woke up with cuffs restraining his arms and legs, as well as what felt almost like magnets, which was a silly idea.  What was worrying was that this was a First Order medical chamber he was in.

"I suspected you would rise again," Hux said, standing between Han and the only door.

"Let me outta here, and you'll see what else I can do," Han threatened him.  Hearing the loud breaths, "Is my son here?"

"No.  He and Supreme Leader Snoke have gone ahead to continue their training and find a suitable world to establish our next base upon."

"Then who's doing a Vader impression?"

"That should be obvious," Hux said.

"Humor me."

"How do you survive falling a height greater than most mountains, while your chest cavity has been burnt and partly cauterized?"

 _No,_ Han thought.  _No!_

"You wouldn't consider that the worst of it," Hux said.

"No?  What's the worst, then?"

"Your friends never tried to recover your body.  You were abandoned by the ones you trusted most.  How that must sting."

"It happens," Han said, sounding truthful enough - _and it did...back before I met Luke and Leia and got involved in everything.  And then when I was feeling sorry for myself after my kid went on a rampage._   "You going to let me up?"

Hux took a step back, and pressed a sequence of wall buttons.

Han was released from his restraints and cuffs, and set standing on the floor.  Looking down, he could see a flat panel covering his abs and chest; the breathing sounds came from there.  And below that, reinforced boots holding together his legs; ditto the gloves on his hands.  _Save a mirror for later._   "I'm not as bad as Vader, it seems."

"In appearance," Hux said, unimpressed with Han's denial.  "But you are sufficiently like him, enough to spark memories in anyone you meet - particularly if you return to your precious Rebellion.  What reception do you think you would garner?  What of your wife, the General?"

 _She'd be like Chewie - excited and relieved that I'm back...and then they'd see all this tech, and I'd have to watch their faces fall._   "I'm no Vader," Han re-said.  "So why'd you do this?"

"Because your son is not fit to lead."

"This may shock you, but we agree on that."

"Yet it is the will of our Supreme Leader that Kylo Ren will succeed him," Hux said.  "I never thought it was the bloodline of the great Darth Vader that made him worth emulating and following  --  and you are here to prove me right."


End file.
